I’m running with an assumption: that we’re all in agreement that butterflies are beautiful and seeing one creates an instant internal fluttering for you in the same way it does for me.

Butterflies have a known life cycle, neatly contained inside of four stages (egg, caterpillar, pupa, butterfly) and you can read about those stages on at least a bazillion* different websites. I am no scientist and I still know that butterflies don’t live for very long** once they’ve reached stage four — the one in which they’ve decidedly left their shell behind and come out as a butterfly.

Every last bit of their seemingly-fragile and dainty feet to their expertly-crafted exoskeletal wings is beautiful, perfect in its imperfections.

Only I don’t see imperfection when I see a butterfly; I see living out loud. I see expression and courage and light. I see my greatest vision of myself.

My gifts and talents aren’t any less beautiful and significant than a butterfly’s wings.

And my life cycle is also marked; I just don’t know how many stages I have or where I am in their progression.

Am I flying while the sun shines, as the butterflies do? Or am I worried about what others will think of my gifts and stay hovering too near my long-ago abandoned shell — that cocoon that once (but no longer) gave me safety to morph into my essential, gorgeous, individual, flawed and wonderful self?

I want to laugh and sing and dance and flutter my way along this path to mastery while my wings still beat. This path of the imperfect me — this is where the fun happens, this is where the real growth occurs, this is where I get to become.